Cycle
by Ziven
Summary: [AR] Another Chosen unfit to match Martel's wavelength. Another fruitless Journey of Regeneration. Yggdrasil - the half-elf, the God - had grown impatient.


**Cycle**

The strike was hard along the cheek of the auburn haired man. His neck swiveled with the weight of it, muscles straining to balance the force that had enacted itself upon them. Something burst—the tongue grazed hard against teeth. Blood gushed. Kratos spat it out, knowing that the anger hadn't been meant for him. The blow he had just taken had saved at least three hundred beings from the wrath of a God.

The blond man before him paced back and forth, a mountain becoming a volcano for all the rage he sputtered. Kratos stood there, loyal, enduring—strong. His blood lay on the ground between them. It was not the first time he had seen himself mirrored in red on the floor, distorting his image, making him something different. In the eyes of God he was no longer Kratos. He was simply a man standing before him, an outlet for his rage.

Kratos knew the cause for Yggdrasil's anger: another Chosen unfit to match Martel's wavelength. Another fruitless Journey of Regeneration. Yggdrasil—the half-elf, the God—had grown impatient. He wanted Martel, and the world be damned. Yggdrasil merely _tolerated_ the world, for one was necessary for Martel to have something to live in; something for Mithos to compare her to. But through the pain of that strike, all Kratos could think of were those three hundred men and women that were tolerated, liberated. Three hundred hearts beating, three hundred bodies drawing breath.

_How far we have fallen_, Kratos thought grimly. They were supposed to be saving the world. Had saved the world. And now this. Mithos had digressed to the state of a child, trying to revive Martel. Kratos had not minded the idea of the two worlds to settle the issue of two greedy countries—Sylvarant and Tethe'alla—but extorting them for the sake of the woman that was barely and forcibly clinging to existence?

There were more strikes coming, Kratos knew, and so he did not move. Shifting would make thing worse, or prompt Yggdrasil to remember who he was abusing. He didn't want that. He was already haunted by screams of the innocent. His filthy wings—transparent as they might have been—were not too burdened to take this punishment. He had not curbed Mithos's obsession. And he had not been able to save Martel. Kratos's breath caught in his chest with that thought—it made Yggdrasil's next blow more painful. He felt his knees sway, and exerted himself to keep them upright. Sudden movements would wake Yggdrasil from his anger. He would stand.

The first Seraphim shouted and screamed. There was only so much rage that could be expressed in two blows. The Chosen had failed. Martel must wait again. Yggdrasil hoped that they would die, all of them—they had all killed her.

Kratos knew that they had not. The man who had killed Martel had been tortured until his heart gave out from exhaustion and shock, eons ago—the dark haired angel had watched with contempt. That man had deserved everything he'd gotten. But the death of one man was not enough for Yggdrasil; Kratos and Yuan, however, could not allow him to punish humans or half-elves for crimes that they hadn't committed. Yuan was not aware of Yggdrasil's violence outside of the usual—Kratos would not allow him to be privy to the information.

Yggdrasil settled into his throne, staring at Kratos. The latter always stared back—the stare would not shatter the anger. Yggdrasil didn't know who Kratos was. His eyes were fixed on Martel, even as they bored into Kratos with the hatred he knew Mithos held for allhumans and half-elves. Kratos would not know what was happening in Cruxis until he was released, and by then he would need time to recuperate.

His breaths were shallow when Yggdrasil rose from his chair to deliver the third blow, followed by the fourth, and the fifth. His knees gave way and Kratos collapsed. The rage had taken hold, and Yggdrasil would not awaken until he had exhausted it. Kratos relaxed the tensed muscles, the pain overcoming him as he lay on the ground—stinging, foreign but natural all at once.

* * *

Edited 9/24/11.

This is definitely practice for my issue with paragraph spaces. I had this written up for a little while now, and just hadn't bothered to type it. This is a deviant from my usual works, which are based in the YGO fandom, but I still like ToS and I wanted to devote some time to it even if I couldn't bother to do a long, drawn out and multi-chaptered thing.

I hope that this might be enough to tide over some of my fellow ToS fans, but I'm afraid that my serious works involving Yggdrasil don't get that much attention.

"I will return, for I am the darkness..."


End file.
